E-One Bronto

A few fire departments here in central New Jersey have in service and are ordering new Bronto aerials to replace older trucks. I have seen one in person and they seem to need a half of a " football field " to set up there outriggers and to raise and swing the boom to move out the bucket or platform to extend towards a building, and watch out for those overhead wires. It seems to have almost the same type of manueverable problems that the old " Snorkels " had !

Having spent time with both....Nope. 2 different animals, 2 different sets of issues.

your right about being to different animals, with the Bronto having a much better " extended reach " than the Snorkel apparatus. They are slowly fading away from the fire service, Philly, has a few and South Amboy, NJ still has one mounted on a Seagrave chassis !

Looks something like our T-Rex, the first of which set foot on US soil yesterday at the Port of Baltimore. The biggest difference is that like the Raptor Aerial the T-Rex is fully automatic with the ability to short-jack in close quarters. The Baby Rex (B-32) which we sell in the rest of the world is a neat articulating platform that fits about anywhere and tops out at 36,000#

Our neghiboring town has one that was purchased under impact fees $800k+. The rig has an insane outrigger spread which has basically made it useless to respond in anything other than the wider streets in the residential area or commercial / industrial areas. We have changed our box cards to replace them with their engine rather than the truck.

We all know about the ability to short jack and we drill with them often, but the urban streets and parking on both sides really cuts down the areas to work.

T-REX will not stop at Expo, our Canadian customer has been very gracious waiting for us to make the North American Conversion and we don't want to lose a day in completeing the job. My Boss Steffen flew it before it left Karlsruhe and says it is as quick and smoothe as a Raptor. The chassis in the photo is a Mercedes Econic, a nice cab but a little snug for us normal size people, mutants like T.C. think there in a Ball Room. This unit is owned by a private on site fire department which gives a hint towards the manueverability of the rig. For those of you who have been to Interschutz our PA Dealer (East Penn Fire) is trying to create a little of that experience by offering the hands on demo off site after show hours. Hopefully we will get a chance to meet 807 and some of the other guys on this forum.

Having spent time with both....Nope. 2 different animals, 2 different sets of issues.

I agree. The jack spread on a Snorkel is much more narrow than most aerials since it uses stabilizers in an "A" configuration. When operating a Snorkel, it pays to have eyes in the back of your head; you must be ever-mindful of the articulating boom behind you.

The maximum horizontal reach of an 85-foot Snorkel is 44'6" (at a 90 degree right angle). Your horizontal reach decreases the further you move away from that angle.

The Bronto seems more versatile but requires a lot of width for set up.

your right about being to different animals, with the Bronto having a much better " extended reach " than the Snorkel apparatus. They are slowly fading away from the fire service, Philly, has a few and South Amboy, NJ still has one mounted on a Seagrave chassis !

If you know of anyone in the market for a 1988 85-foot Snorkel, there will be one listed on www.govdeals.com within the next month. PM me for details.

your right about being to different animals, with the Bronto having a much better " extended reach " than the Snorkel apparatus. They are slowly fading away from the fire service, Philly, has a few and South Amboy, NJ still has one mounted on a Seagrave chassis !

Last time I checked, St. Joseph, Missouri, still had their mid 1990s Pierce-Snorkel in service out of their headquarters station (Station 1).

I would hate to see these puppies out to pasture. I grew up about a mile from the plant that built them in St. Joesph.

I spent a lot of time putting T-Rex and Bronto side by each and we are one of the Canadian customers that has an order in for one as of about 2 months ago. One of the things that set T-Rex apart from Bronto in our eyes was in fact the automation and that the industrial version of the Bronto wasn't all that appealing in terms of losing functionality. It was overweight, over packed, quite a bit longer (a few feet actually made a difference in our situation)... I put the specs side by side between ours and Saudi Aramco's (who had an order in for 5 Brontos) and the similarities were remarkable.

From the root of the boom to the tip, the Bronto arm is safer via the chain driven mechanisms (14:1 safety as opposed to 8:1 in the cable system), initially had a higher rated tip load and an extra 15 feet on the boom (for the industrial version). Rosy has since upgraded their tip limit on the Rex to 1400lbs which is a couple hundred pounds more than Bronto but is still restricted to 104ft. Bronto also, at the time, had the advantage of a 20 year history... some in harsh climates like Siberia (near our operational environment) whereas the T-Rex could only look good on paper. Additionally, word was circulating that the T-Rex boom was being marketted internationally because it wasn't successful in Europe- presumably because Bronto was dominating the market. Another manufacturer recently talked about introducing a 3rd articulating arm to the market in the near future- so I'm keeping my ear to the ground about that as well.

For those of you interested in the T-Rex and some of our initial findings when compared to the Bronto, look for my thread on the subject (T-Rex, on the prowl once again). Our version looks a lot like the Bronto side by side- as opposed to the European version.